Do you feel as though you need to be around other people to be truly happy?
You’re not alone in feeling that way.
So many people think they need others to be truly happy, or they are afraid of what it means to be alone.
But, being alone doesn’t have to be a negative thing. In fact, there are those who may spend their time alone, but don’t find themselves to be lonely.
Introverts recharge their social batteries and internal energy by spending time alone with themselves or their hobbies.
You, too, have the ability to have a good time, enjoy happiness, and find fulfillment whilst alone.
1. Reframe your alone time into something more positive.
Being around other people requires a personal sacrifice of your time and how you spend it.
You have to consider the needs of others when you spend time around family, friends, or with a partner.
When you’re alone, you have the freedom to dictate whatever it is you want to do, whenever you want to do it.
That freedom should be embraced while you have the opportunity.
Spend your time doing the things that you want to do in the ways that you want to do them.
Instead of focusing on loneliness, turn your alone time into a period of self-reflection and improvement.
So change your thinking from, “Oh no, I’ve got a day by myself,” to, “Great, I’ve got a day for myself.”
2. Grant yourself permission to be alone.
The struggle with loneliness often includes guilt that we are somehow conducting our lives incorrectly.
It’s easy to look at other people in happy relationships or socializing with friends and think that we must be doing something wrong to not have a similar life.
But things don’t always run that smoothly.
Friends get busy, relationships can get strained or end, and sometimes life just pulls us away from our social groups.
But that’s okay!
It doesn’t need to be that way forever and you’re not in competition with everyone else.
It’s okay to be alone. Remind yourself of that permission if you find yourself dwelling on why you shouldn’t be.
Don’t waste your time comparing your life to others. Everyone has a different path.
3. Don’t spend your time on time-wasting activities.
It’s tempting to sit down and binge watch a television show in your free time, but it won’t bring you any closer to being a happier person.
It may provide an endorphin boost of brief happiness in the moment, but your long-term feelings may differ as you look back on all of the time you wasted where you could have been doing something to improve yourself, learn something new, or build something.
Does that mean you should never engage in time-wasting activities?
Not at all!
We’re all human. Sometimes we just want to chill out and do nothing for a while.
And sometimes that period of doing nothing is just what we need to reboot and refresh ourselves.
Just don’t let time-wasting activities take up a significant amount of your alone time.
4. Develop routines that will improve your health and happiness.
Routines often serve as a foundation for building better health and happiness.
Having time to yourself, where you don’t have the needs of others imposed on you, gives you an opportunity to start and develop new routines and habits that can boost your emotional state.
5. Plan more solo outings and travel.
Traveling solo can be an invigorating experience because of the freedom it provides.
Traveling with a partner is fine and all, but you need to work around their needs and desires as well as your own.
They may not be interested in seeing the same sights or doing the types of activities that you want to do.
Take that opportunity to travel to a place you’ve always wanted to go, but haven’t been able to.
That doesn’t need to be far from home. There’s nothing wrong with treating yourself to a dinner or a movie you want to see.
6. Focus on gratitude and what you do have.
A person who is sad because they are lonely may feel that negativity creeping into other areas of their life.
By focusing on the loneliness, it gives more emotional energy to those feelings, which push out other happier aspects of life that may be going well.
Gratitude is the solution to that problem.
By focusing on what’s good in our life, we can keep the negativity from overwhelming our minds.
7. Cultivate your passions.
What are you passionate about?
Art? Reading? Gardening?
It’s difficult to keep up with those things when you are trying to work your schedule around others.
Solitude is a great time to get back in touch with your passions or cultivate new ones.
Touching on passions that bring you joy can help you fill your mind with positive thoughts and push out the negative.
8. Work on your own emotional landscape.
There are some people who are uncomfortable with being alone because they feel as though they may not be good enough on their own.
People who have been through abusive relationships or had rough childhoods may have been made to feel as though they were incompetent.
This is a common technique among abusers to keep the abused dependent on them and fearful of being without.
But that is a lie and a tool of abuse.
For those who feel they must be in a relationship or must be in a group, solitude is the opportune time to break those feelings apart and prove to themselves that they are capable of standing on their own two feet.
That alone time can instead be used as a period of refreshment, rejuvenation, and healing before moving forward and getting involved in other relationships.
9. Remind yourself that the grass isn’t necessarily greener.
It can be really frustrating when you’ve paired your life with another person.
Yes, it’s absolutely wonderful to have a good partner who has your back.
On the other hand, a partner is their own person with their own problems, difficulties, and challenges.
Being lonely without anyone else isn’t a good feeling, but it’s a worse feeling to be with someone who makes you feel lonely.
Meeting new people or getting involved in another relationship means getting exposed to their wounds too.
10. Teach yourself to relax in the present.
The largest obstacle to finding happiness while being alone is in our perspective.
We have the ability to choose whether or not we want to look at being alone as a positive or negative event.
Yes, it can feel negative, but we can try to guide those feelings into a more positive place by reminding ourselves that the loneliness will not last forever.
There are plenty of other people out there who are looking for connection, for friends, for relationships.
Allow yourself to relax in your solitude and use it as a time for self-improvement and for fulfilling the goals you have that are harder to accomplish in a relationship.
Let life run its course and keep looking for new activities and opportunities to connect with others.
Sooner or later, you’ll find them
